Magic reviews by Larry Brodahl

First, let me state that I'm not a mentalist, nor a performer of mental magic. I do some close up and mainly parlor/banquet shows.

And yet, I found 3 items that I can use. Not in the way the author probably intended, but that's a good thing.

My favorite books are those that present tricks that I can springboard off of, whether it's by using the plot line, the methodology, or whatever.

This book fits in this category.

Even the material I will never use will be filed away in the ol' grey matter and might be exhumed one day.

Good book.

I judge books by either the number of tricks that I will ACTUALLY do, or by the number of ideas it sets off in my brain. In both cases, this books does very well.

With only 1 very quick perrusal of this ebook under the belt, I have 4 items that I'm going to be thrilled to do. 2 of them have already been tested on the spouse and both fooled her. (And we know how hard that is to do).

1 of the items used a simple well-known sleight, and the other used a simple gimmick. I already knew the sleight, and the gimmick took all of 5 minutes to make, so this book is already marked for re-reading and re-reading.

And as far as setting off ideas in my brain goes, so far I've slapped my forehead about 10 times and said, "D'oh - why didn't I think of that?". Some clever people in this book.

The layout of the book is excellent, and has a simple usable way of jumping directly to the trick or author that you like, or quickly bouncing back to the index.

The only real complaint I have is that a couple of the links in the book that point to demos of some of the tricks are expired and don't work.

All in all, for the money, this is a very nice book with some very usable material.

Unbelievably well thought out and produced item. I've started using it for a Confabulation type routine, and it's absolutely perfect.